Aces High Bulletin Board
Help and Support Forums => Technical Support => Topic started by: Clutz on July 02, 2006, 02:59:54 PM
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Rubber bullets are a thing with me I believe. Last week I flew about 10 sorties and got 1 kill and 1 assist. So I spent all weekend on my system tweaking this and tweaking that. Then I fly 3 sorties and get 9 kills. Not only did I get the kills, I'm watching pieces of planes fall off and explode. This is a fun game when u get to see this sort of stuff happen. :) Then the next day I get hardly anything and never seen any damage to the planes I shoot. Last night I flew a sortie and got 6 kills. The most I ever got before was 3. It seems to go from one extreme to the other. I have learned a lot from reading the forums and learning the tweaks that need to be done. But I figure first things first, which leads me to my question. Can u guys give me some advice on my system. I can spend maybe 3 or 4 hundred, or even more if its really necessary, but I would like to make use of what I think is a pretty good system and just add on to it what needs to be added. What I'm guessing is a better video card and a sound card. In fact, any suggestions would be greatly appreciated. TY very much, This game rocks. :aok System is:
P4 3.4 PRESSCOTT socket 478 cpu -800hmz bus hyperthreading, 1MB cache
ABIT IC7 MOBO
1 GB DDR433 PC3500 Dual Channel Memory
Maxtor 160 GB 7200rpm w/ 8MB cache
128 MB GeForce Fx5700 AGP
On board sound 6 channel, Realtek Ac97, I dont have a card for sound.
Intel PRO/1000 MT Ethernet
16X DVD+RW, DVD-ROM
DSL connection and Windows XP Pro.
Monitor is an old piece of junk, but im going to get a new one.
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Get a better video card. Do you have PCI-e or just AGP?
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ANother thing to note is to kill all non-essential processes such as virus scanners before starting the game.
There is some util FSsomething, I can't remember what it's called that you can automate killing of services and processes before you run the game...
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Scottydawg, ty: I think my mobo is just AGP PCI. Not PCI-e. Is this real important? Important enough I should get another MOBO rather than getting a card for this MOBO and throwing good money after bad so to speak? And yes I am using the FSAutoStart program to kill processes. Thanks again:)
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Your system is pretty good, another gig of ram never hurt any one :)
Rubber bullets are more of a lag issue than anything else. You said you have DSL, are you running through a network cable or a USB port? I hear USB is bad.
I would also run a ping plot to the main arena server. PingPlotter is a free program that give good info. Google it to find the site, install it then type in the address to the server 206.16.60.39 then hit trace. Mine from New England are a steady 40-50 most times, but on Sundays its all over the place and just isn't worth flying, you could have the same trouble.
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Originally posted by Clutz
Scottydawg, ty: I think my mobo is just AGP PCI. Not PCI-e. Is this real important? Important enough I should get another MOBO rather than getting a card for this MOBO and throwing good money after bad so to speak? And yes I am using the FSAutoStart program to kill processes. Thanks again:)
Agp bandwidth is considerably narrower and slower than the new PCI-E standard.
Not sure about the rubber bullets... hope you're not using bittorrent or any other P2P program, the sheer number of connections those programs make simultaneously can ruin online anything.
I get a solid 31 ms ping from my comcast connection, every time. One time I forgot to shut off uTorrent and my pings were like 300 ms.
Another thing for the Realtek chip. Get the latest drivers off the Realtek site, and turn down DX accelleration to none. I was having MAJOR problems with my PC until I did that.
What ingame settings are you using, i.e. resolution, tex, etc.
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Stick another Gig of RAM in and ditch the onboard sound. There's plenty of old creative cards that will do'ya fine.
Clean up your disk
Defrag
go here http://www.pcpitstop.com and run through the tests
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Originally posted by Tumor
Stick another Gig of RAM in and ditch the onboard sound. There's plenty of old creative cards that will do'ya fine.
Clean up your disk
Defrag
go here http://www.pcpitstop.com and run through the tests
I still think he could do with a better vid card, but the AGP deal kinda puts a damp on that... I'll tell ya, with the 1024 textures and everything maxed out, this game is pretty great looking.
I've been digging through my old crap for two weeks looking for my old SB live card. I'll find it eventually!
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Originally posted by scottydawg
Agp bandwidth is considerably narrower and slower than the new PCI-E standard.
AGP bandwith is not a bottleneck for today's cards. However, it is a tough choice whether it is worth investing in another AGP card that definitely will not work in your next major upgrade. Although; I did read that the new Conroe CPU is going to work with existing motherboards.
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Maybe not the bandwidth, but def the clock speed, don't you think?
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Wow, this is way cool u guys helping me out. Why didn't I just ask before? Duh. Scottydawg, I was looking at this on the net for a card. It says this and I wonder if it will work. "Nvidia dIdn't make an AGP 7900GT so Gainward have taken a PCI-E model + used a 'Bridge' chip to convert one to AGP. So as not to annoy Nvidia, they still refer to it as a '7800GS' but it is in fact *definitely* an (underclocked) 7900GT with 24 pipelines. It is *not* the same as other manufacturer's 7800GS AGP models. Just trust Gainward, look at their website!" My pc is running clean and lean, as far as I know. I'm still working on that too. I'm using 800x600 cause it said 1024 might have issues with the game. Max texture size is 512, Unlimited frame rate if checked, Preload in system mem. is checked, Hardware vertex processing is checked, Optimize objects is checked, and optimize terrain is checked. Any suggestions having to do with ingame setting would be appreciated. I don't know what to check, lol. Ping plotter is about 30 but I get a spike every minute or so that goes to about 150 or so, and I get a packet loss about every few minutes but it then goes away. A lot of this stuff takes me time to learn but if u guys keep throwing me some ideas, I'll sort threw them all one by one. These ideas so far are really encouraging.
TY.
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Ya, forgot that... a new Vid card would be nice. I "think" the Prescott may be a bit of the problem. They run slower than Northwoods, has something to do with the instuction-set being allot more than Northwood (not a techie here, but a bud of mine is and explained it).
I ran a Prescott 3.0 w/1G RAM and a 6600GT... NEVER got the performance in terms of FPS I thought I should. I've since moved to AMD... something I swore I'd never do years ago, but... I couldn't be happier.
Tumor
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Originally posted by Clutz
Wow, this is way cool u guys helping me out. Why didn't I just ask before? Duh. Scottydawg, I was looking at this on the net for a card. It says this and I wonder if it will work. "Nvidia dIdn't make an AGP 7900GT so Gainward have taken a PCI-E model + used a 'Bridge' chip to convert one to AGP. So as not to annoy Nvidia, they still refer to it as a '7800GS' but it is in fact *definitely* an (underclocked) 7900GT with 24 pipelines. It is *not* the same as other manufacturer's 7800GS AGP models. Just trust Gainward, look at their website!" My pc is running clean and lean, as far as I know. I'm still working on that too. I'm using 800x600 cause it said 1024 might have issues with the game. Max texture size is 512, Unlimited frame rate if checked, Preload in system mem. is checked, Hardware vertex processing is checked, Optimize objects is checked, and optimize terrain is checked. Any suggestions having to do with ingame setting would be appreciated. I don't know what to check, lol. Ping plotter is about 30 but I get a spike every minute or so that goes to about 150 or so, and I get a packet loss about every few minutes but it then goes away. A lot of this stuff takes me time to learn but if u guys keep throwing me some ideas, I'll sort threw them all one by one. These ideas so far are really encouraging.
TY.
I believe that Skuzzy recommends that you not preload in system memory if you have 1gb or less...
Also if you go to the vid options ingame and move the sliders around for the detail ranges, that might speed things up.
All in all you have a decent system. I'd run SiSoft Sandra on it to make sure you don't have any glaring problems and also there are a TON of optimization advice sites around (just don't install anything questionable).
I don't know about that AGP-PCIe thing, sounds weird, might even be slower than your current card, there's no telling...
Tumor, I don't know if his cpu is a bottleneck, it is a 3.4Ghz, which should make up for any instruction set problems. Although, Skuzzy has said on here that he thinks the Prescotts are the worst designed chips he's ever seen, and he would know.
That packet loss could definitely cause you problems with rubber bulleting... you shoudl investigate that. Perhaps run a process trace (Procexp download) or a packet sniffer to see if something is calling home or mucking with your netcard.
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....as I understand it, the Prescott would be the bees knees if they could get it up to 5ghz lol
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Wheeeew, I looked at that Procexp download scottydawg, and that program is going to take a liiiiiiitle bit of time to sink in, lol. I'll look it over. Hehehe. Tumor, whats bees knees mean? lol. Is that a Jed Clampit type of thing one might say? Hehehe, funny funny. Tell u the truth, I like these forums as much as I like the game, maybe even more.
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I have a 2.4 CPU, 1 gig of ram, and a 9800 ATI 128 megs video card. My system isn't near as good as yours, and I don't get rubber bullets.... 'sept maybe on sundays :)
The packet lose and the spikes are most likely the cause of yours. If the spike is real regular, your computer maybe running another program in the background and its sending info in regular pulses.... may even be a spyware.
Adaware is a good free program to find the little "beasties" hiding on your computer. If your computer is clean, then you might want to watch the pingplotter for a bit. See if its the same hop, you might be able to get the ISP to clean up that nexus... if ya can get them to admit to a problem :rolleyes:
good luck
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Ty Fugitive; I did not know background programs would effect the Internet process. I guess if they are spying they are using my connection. Logical. I guess I kept thinking CPU usage instead of spyware. Maybe its both. I'm going to spy search some more. I'm thinking about maybe wiping out the hard drive all together and a clean install of XP. Or would 98 be a better Os for the game? I am trying to avoid that if I can. Pings are real steady at 20 with spikes every minute or so up to 190 or even 340 on occasion and packet loss happens at different hops every 3 mins or so. But then they clear up. Is this normal or should it always be steady pings with no packet losses ? What does this packet loss on all different hops mean? Yeah, I'm looking at it now and packets go to the birds quite often it seems. But then it will all be good for maybe 7 mins or so. Some of them have blank lines for the DNS name, what does this mean? And how does all this correlate to time of day the Internet is hooked up? I guess I really need to figure out if its my PC or my connection. Also, do u have frame rate problems with that card u have Fugitive and does this make rubber bullets? I have frame rate problems since the last patch. I want to get another video card like scottydawg says to do and some more ram like Tumor says to do. I got the bar tab guys, cocktails are all on me. I'm from New Orleans, this is how we show our appreciation down here! :D Thanks so much.
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Originally posted by scottydawg
I still think he could do with a better vid card, but the AGP deal kinda puts a damp on that...
Theoretically PCIe has more bandwidth than AGP. In practice neither has reached its peak capacity, and the CPU will always be the bottleneck for both standards.
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TY Krusty; Can I get an adequate card that is not PCI-e? And, I read something on a Skuzzy page that said bios can be tweaked to make memory and video cards work properly. It's an agp tweak I think. It was very technical! lol. Is this a way to avoid bottle neck?
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Originally posted by Krusty
Theoretically PCIe has more bandwidth than AGP. In practice neither has reached its peak capacity, and the CPU will always be the bottleneck for both standards.
My point was the lack of high-end AGP cards anymore.
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No I very rarely get video problems and my FR are pretty steady in the 70-75 range. My video card is about 3 or 4 times better than yours.... acording to Toms Hardware .com video card benchmarks. So that might be where you fr problem is.
AGP cards are a dieing breed, but they are not going to be dead next week :) The new wave is PCI Express, and eventually everyone will be using them, but not for a while yet. With the CPU and MB combonation you have you should be good to go for awhile... a year or so. Drop in a Radeon X800 XT 256 AGP card (about 10-12 time better than yours), and another gig of ram and your computer is right up there with the top dogs.
The connection on the other hand is something you have to worry about alot more. Packet lose is a big problem. You fire your guns at an x,y,z co-ordinate, this info is set in a packet to the host computer. But oh wait, that packet is lost in transit, host computer DOSEN'T score any hits for you. So you "see" rubber bullets.
Run a virus scan. If you don't have virus protection (shame on you!) go to HouseCalls (http://housecall.trendmicro.com/) Its a free on-line virus scanner that work thru your browser and does a pretty good job and is very helpfull when it comes to removing viruses. Run Ad-Aware (http://www.lavasoft.de/software/adaware/) Then run the ping plot again. You said you use FSAutoStart....best little program ever!... before it launches the game how many processes do you have running? I think I have 14 on miine. Another thing you can do to check is to log in the game, use to drop to the desk top, hit and click the processes tab. Aces High should be using 98% or so of you CPU. If you see anything jumping up, other than "system idle processes" that could be the one hurting you. write the name down and check it on Google to see what it dose. Shut it down if you can, remove it if its a "bad one".
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Good tips, Fugitive.
Also if you want a free antivirus. AVG is good
free.grisoft.com
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Fugative; I have Xoftspy and ewido spy tools, and McAfee anti virus. I'm going to get some freeware today and do some more scanning. I have 29 processes running before I start FSAutoStart. It was about 45, :( With aces running online I still have 14 running, so I guess I'm not a clean and lean as I thought. I'm going to go slim down now and see if that will correct ping and packet problem. CPU usage is steady 50% even while I'm flying in an empty online room. I think u guys have got me about on the right track here. This fun stuff. :) TY
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The 6800GT is still a damn good card. The 7000 series is even better. Both are available in AGP.
While you don't have a "great" video card, you have a "good one". I think the problem will be either connection related, or backgound processes related.
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What he ^^ said.
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Originally posted by Clutz
CPU usage is steady 50% even while I'm flying in an empty online room.
this is bad, VERY BAD. CPU usage while the game is running should be close to 100%. What ever else is using your cycles is what may be hurting your connection. I think Skuzzy said 2-3% use elsewhere is ok, but if more than 5% was used elsewhere you got trouble. Your having 50% usage elswhere is BIG trouble.
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Fugitive; I got 2-3% with nothing open. So I ran Ah and some other games at the same time. I was able to get CPU up to 76%. Would this indicate that CPU is working properly? If something is using my cycles, wouldn't it show in task manager? Also, I cant figure how the get rid of the processes I have to go away. I have 14 of them after FSAotoStart . I can use task manager, but they come right back again when I reload or reboot. TY. I'm thinking I might let this be my last thread, I don't want to over extend my welcome . I think I need a break! Brain overload! hehehe. TY everyone that has helped me. I just cant say enough. I think I am going to save everything and wipe hard drive, get the cards I need and start from scratch. U guys rock! :aokb I'll be back!
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See here for all your "tweaking" needs, BIOS, video card, Windows, etc.
http://www.tweakguides.com/
Enjoy.
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Yo....
too much to read..
I have a 256mb ATI card that I will sell also more ram sticks that will work with your mobo...
Let me know if you want them...will sell for CHEAP
I just got a new comp and run everything on max detail..F--- ING SWEEEEEEEEEETTTTT
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BGB, dont lie to those folks.
You know you cant read.
:)
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wasnt so much that fancy reading as much as the fancy typing...but i have lights in the basement now
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EasyCleaner has a registry cleaner AND a function that lets you stop programs from starting up when you boot via the registry.
I've also heard that not using Vsync can cause rubber bullets. Open up the nVidia Control Panel and go to Performance and Quality Settings. Turn Vertical Synchronization on.
I'm running DSL with a 3.06GHz Northwood, 1.5 GB of DDR400 RAM, and a GF6800 with all the shaders unlocked. No rubber bullets, very little lag, and FR from 36-75 (75Hz refresh on the monitor) with 1024 textures preloaded to memory and all sliders set to full.
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His system could use a boost in the video department , an X800 series Ati or even a 7800GS if u dont mind spending some cash . I personally would go with a X800XL -XT, X850XT (6800GS -GT-Ultra ) and another Gig of ram .
I'm using 800x600 cause it said 1024 might have issues with the game.
I'm looking at this and wondering if you got that confused with 1024 max texture size? People usually have trouble running 1024 texures smoothly ,not the higher screen res's . Good luck 38